School of PE Blog

I'll just state this upfront: 1/10 is a larger scale than 1/100. Write that down somewhere, so you never get confused again! The worst part of this exam for me was memorizing conventions like that. This will come up both directly and indirectly in questions. For example, maybe you've determined that the scale required to fit a map on a sheet of paper is 1/44 and the problem asks for the largest scale that can be used, rounded to the nearest 10. The answer would be 1/50, because 1/40 would be too large and 1/60 would be too small.

A very common "trick" on the exam is to give you a linear scale (so 1:10), and then ask for the measurement of a rectangular area. You'll have to apply the scale factor twice because the units considered are changing from linear to square. For example, if the rectangle is 2" x 3" on the paper, the area isn't just 6 square inches *10 (=60), it's 2*10 x 3*10 = 600. This can definitely get you if you're moving too quickly on the exam, so look out for these.

As in the example above, the scale is given as 1:10. When the units are not given in a scale, you can assume that the units are the same. For example, 1 inch = 10 inches, 1 mile = 10 miles. Sometimes the problem statement can be written in a misleading way, so make sure to recognize when the units are missing.

You'll sometimes see a problem state, "the scale factor is x" and the measured distance is y, what is the real distance? For me, it can be tricky to remember if you're supposed to multiply or divide by the scale factor, so jot down this formula on your cheat sheet: real distance = measured distance *x